


Come As You Are

by doctor_jasley, gala_apples



Series: S. K. Anon [6]
Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy, Mindless Self Indulgence, My Chemical Romance, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, M/M, Rants, Shopping, Shopping Malls, arts and crafts, plumbing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 07:53:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1091451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctor_jasley/pseuds/doctor_jasley, https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/pseuds/gala_apples
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five friends they made.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Come As You Are

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Nirvana.

The bed is warm and Brendon grumbles to himself when he gets poked again. He scoots closer to Mikey to try and get away from the nuisance pestering him from blissful dreamless sleep. Thankfully the poking subsides enough for him to almost fall back to sleep. That is, until a wet finger nudges him behind the ear. The water’s cold and suddenly he’s awake.

It takes him forever to find his glasses without waking anyone else up. Blinking does nothing to change the time when he fumbles for the nearest cell phone to figure out how early it is. Three Forty Five stares back at him in thin stenciled numbers and Brendon wants to throw the phone at the reason why he’s not dreaming of something happy like rainbows and puppies. He’s too tired to glare at Frank properly and he probably just looks like some squint eyed fish instead of someone very upset over being woken up.

“What?”

There should be an ‘s’ tacked onto the end of the what and a ‘wrong’ tagging along for the ride but Brendon doesn’t feel charitable at the moment. The house is cold and he’s already starting to chill just from sitting at the side of the bed with his feet almost touching the, highly likely, cold as winter in Siberia floor. He turns back to longingly stare at the rapidly cooling warm spot he was laying in not even minutes ago.

“The floor’s leaking.”

That gets his attention because floors don’t just spontaneously decide to spring a leak. There has to be a source of moisture. He blames not being fully awake when he ever so slowly stretches out his foot to check the floor. It’s cold as Antarctica but dry. Frank snorts and Brendon glares at him. What did Frank expect, saying something odd like that?

“I meant the hall floor.”

“Good to know. I’m betting this means you want me to check it out?”

When he doesn’t get an answer, Brendon sighs and finally stands. He may as well figure out what’s wrong. A thin trickle of light filters in from the arch of the kitchen and it’s enough to see by. Not that he needs it to know when he’s become the human treasure detector. The closer to the bathroom he gets the squishier the carpet gets. Squishy and wet. The water that sloshes against his feet when they make an impression in the carpet makes him wince.

The water is colder than tap water should be. It’s enough to wake him up completely. Goodbye any chance of him getting back to sleep any time soon. He sighs again and doesn’t listen to Frank when he speaks. Doing that will only make him glare instead of trying to figure out what the problem is. As long as he can focus maybe he won’t want to do something drastic. 

Going into the bathroom solves the problem of what caused the carpet in the hall to become an almost frozen swamp. The tiles are slick with a tiny pond lazing across the surface, slowly expanding outward. Brendon doesn’t even want to begin to think about the germs hitching a ride on the sluicing water that’s milling about in the hall for the carpet to try and soak up.

He almost slips trying to twist the faucet off. There’s only a thin stream running into the basin. It’s still enough to accumulate in the apparently stopped up sink before running over the sides in a low rent production of a waterfall effect. What he needs is several hundred clean mops, some dry towels and maybe a bucket or two to bale all the water into the tub. His luck, the tub with be clogged with hair and he’ll end up having to deal with that problem as well.

“Start scooping the water out of the sink.”

“I didn’t do it, why-”

“I swear to god, Frank-”

Frank rolls his eyes. “Fine.” He picks up the toothbrush cup and starts relocating the water to the toilet an inch at a time.

“Do they have a drain snake?”

“How the fuck should I know? Go ask them.”

It’s with maybe a bit more cruel enthusiasm than would be considered acceptable that he shakes Mikey awake. “Do you have a drain snake?”

“What?”

Brendon only begins to repeat himself before he comes to his senses. “Do you have... No. Of course you don’t. You smear cupcakes on the wall and think dinner plates go under the oven. Of course you fucking don’t.” He takes a deep breath then continues. “Get up. You need to help me soak up the water.”

“What?”

“Get. Up. The hall is soaking wet, shit’s going to get moldy if it soaks in.”

Gerard decides to join the conversation, mumbling “can’t you fix it?”

There are ways of dealing with Gerard appropriately, but Brendon is tired and not in the mood for it. So he reaches across the bed and shoves him hard, until he’s half off the bed and clinging to Mikey so he doesn’t land completely on the floor. “Oops. Guess you’re awake now, sorrrrry. Come help with the water.”

It’s bitchy, but effective. Gerard stands up, and Mikey follows. Brendon pulls a few towels out of the cupboard and starts tossing them down on the carpet. Some areas turn dark immediately, but he points at the light ones. “Stomp. When it’s all wet, trade out another dry one. Put them in the fucking hamper, don’t toss them on the fucking dry carpet. I’m going to attempt to find the Yellow Pages. Wish me good fucking luck.”

It’s actually not as difficult as it sounds. A week ago he was putting away the scent-tested-for-Frank orange dishsoap away, and under the sink was the yellow slab of pages. Like a sane person, Brendon had relocated it to the side table in the living room. Unless one of them got the idea to use it to -well, God only knows, it’s them- it should still be there.

It is. And it’s from 2007. Because that’s how this house works. Nothing date wise is ever current when it comes to calendars and apparently also phone books. Lord only knows what happened to years 2008 and 2009. Brendon’s sure he’s going to have to grab 2011’s when it shows up next year before it becomes paper mache or something else not even remotely phone book like.

There’s no sense in flipping through the pages to find a twenty four hour plumber. He’s got so much luck that he’ll no doubt end up calling the only business no longer in service. This is why current numbers should always be on hand. Thank goodness the Yellow Pages are online now. All he has to do is wake up the computer from sleep mode so he can search for the best place.

Once he has a number scribbled down on a discarded strip of paper he exits out of the page and goes to hunt a cell phone down. He knows there’s at least one in the bedroom, which unfortunately means slogging through the back half of the hallway. Gerard and Frank are doing some kind of weird ass rain-dance. He told them to soak up the water, not perform for the gods. As a good boyfriend, Brendon attempts to keep the scowl off his face as he stomps into the bedroom and slams the door. Seriously, if he comes out and someone is wearing a makeshift headdress someone’s getting shanked.

He snatches up the nearest phone and starts pressing buttons harder than he should, the phone hasn’t done anything to him beside be convenient so Brendon tries his best to not abuse the plastic anymore than he has to. Plus if he’s too keyed up when he asks for someone to make a not even crack of dawn house call he might just piss off the person manning the phones. The last thing he wants is some slacker moron showing up with no clue how to even screw on a faucet handle instead of a professional who knows what they’re doing.

The tinny sound of a ring happens three times before a soft voice answers.

“Thank you for calling Willie’s Wet No More. This is Jamie speaking. How may I help you?”

Brendon pinches the bridge of his nose. He hadn’t been paying any attention to the name of the place when he was skimming for twenty four hour plumber services. Of course he finds the one that will get him laughed at if any of the guys figure out where he called.

“Um, yeah. I have a badly clogged bathroom sink and it’s kinda...flooded into the hallway. So I probably need someone who can check for water damage also if that’s possible.” 

The soft voice asks him several menial questions and Brendon nods like a slow fool before he clues in enough to actually answer the questions verbally. It’s five minutes on the phone with Jamie to have someone set up to be over in the next couple of hours. Yay for some things being simple to accomplish. Jamie takes his information and asks if he needs help with anything else. The moment he says no there’s a soft reply of ‘Thank you for calling and if your technician hasn’t shown up by six am please call back. Goodbye.’ After that the call ends.

The relief of having an actual plumber actually coming is tempered by the fact that he’ll have to be up for potentially two hours just waiting, and then for however long it takes the man -or woman, Brendon doesn’t know and Gerard would lecture him for assuming- to finish what they’re doing. Mikey would probably try to pay him with a credit card, like working class men -or women- carry debit machines in their pockets.

Things definitely slide back to the _fuck my life_ side of the scale when he opens the bedroom door on his boys. All three are still dancing, Mikey the only one with any sort of dignity. Thank fuck there are no headdresses. What there are, are a pile of sopping wet towels further down the hall, on the previously dry part of the carpet.

“Argh. You guys, I seriously. I can’t. Why did you put the wet towels on the carpet when I specifically freaking told you not to?”

Mikey shrugs. “You said put them in the hamper. We don’t have a hamper.”

Mikey’s spared from Brendon tackling him and bashing his head against the wet fucking carpet by the doorbell ringing. Brendon’s never had delivery service so quickly, not even with those _in a half an hour or you eat free_ deals, but he's grateful for it. Jamie must have understood the emergencyness of their emergency. Brendon takes a second to glare at Mikey, pulls the legs of his boxers down as far as they can go, and walks to the front of the house to open the door.

It’s Ryan. It’s not a plumber, coming to save him from this fucking nightmare. It’s Ryan. Brendon's hello transforms as it comes out of his mouth into something louder and more honest. “Why are you even here? Go away!”

Ryan smiles and edges past Brendon into the house. “Frank said your sink exploded. I wanted to see.”

Fucking... Fuck everything. Fuck his life, his boyfriends, _everything_. “Frank, I am not blowing you for a week. Go fuck yourself.”

Frank moves to the front of the house to join them, wet feet leaving imprints on the dry carpet. “What? Why?”

“Why. Do. You. Think.” Frank doesn’t even _like_ Ryan.

“We were chatting on AIM, I couldn’t sleep and he was on. Then I had to piss, and well, obviously you know what came after that. I had to tell him something, I couldn’t just log off without saying goodnight. He asked if he could see, I thought he would be entertaining.”

“Do I look entertained?”

Mikey, who apparently senses the tension, decides to solve it in the way he knows best. “Chill out Bren. You want a handjob?”

“Not ‘til I leave!” Ryan rushes in.

“You could leave now.” Ryan really, really could.

“I haven’t even seen the sink yet!” For the second time in as many minutes, Ryan shoves past him. Brendon gives up and just decides to retreat. If Ryan wants to get his feet wet let him. And if he falls Brendon’s not going to be the one to help him back up. He’s just going to sit here on the living room couch and wait for their plumber to show up, hopefully before the sun’s up for the day. He doesn’t move, not even when Gerard calls down the hall that they’re out of dry towels, and should they start using dirty clothes. Ryan offers one of the emergency bolts from his car, and the rest encourage him to go to his car. Brendon knows a week from now Ryan will be whining that he wasted good fabric, but he’s not going to intervene. Screw it.

The doorbell rings again about half an hour later, and for a moment Brendon has paranoia that somehow there will be a second Ryan on the other side of the door. But since he’s not _actually_ in hell, just feels like he is, it’s highly unlikely that Ryan has a clone. So he heaves himself off the couch and answers it.

Brendon closes his eyes. When he opens them the man is still the same. Tall, blonde shaggy hair with a slight beard, nametag of Bob pinned to his shirt. His flannel shirt, which no matter how often he blinks stays flannel. It’s solid proof God hates him. It can’t be the killing people occasionally thing though, Brendon had a Ryan Ross long before that started.

It’s only when Bob shakes his toolkit at Brendon that he realises he’s just been standing staring. “Uh, Brendon Urie, clogged sink?”

“Yeah. Sorry. This way.” Maybe if they move fast enough and Ryan’s looking in the other direction they’ll all make it out of this alive.

Of course, no such luck. They make it to the layers of fabric and towels before Ryan really sees him. Once that happens, it’s over. Ryan leans into Brendon and whispers -at a volume completely audible to everyone in the house- “He’s wearing flannel. You can’t let someone in flannel fix your sink.”

It’s not like Brendon didn’t see it coming. And if it was the middle of the day, in The Weather Today, Brendon would deal. But he’s only gotten a few hours of sleep, and this is his freakin’ house. “Do you know how to fix it? No? THEN FUCK OFF.”

“What made you such a bitch?”

He’s not going to answer. Since his answer would most likely come in the form of choking Ryan until he passed out, he’s not going to answer. Bob The Plumber doesn’t seem to have the same urge, or at least he’s better at hiding it under the facade of customer service. He just slips his way into the bathroom and puts his kit on the toilet tank. Ryan, of course, can’t let it be. He follows Bob into the bathroom and taps him on the shoulder. When Bob doesn’t reply he does it again. And again. And again.

“Ryan Ross stop poking the plumber!”

Ryan continues undeterred. Once it becomes obvious Bob isn’t going to reply he just starts talking. “Where did you get that? At a Nirvana concert? Sometime in the mid-nineties, and you just never took it off?”

“Got it at a thrift shop, so maybe.”

Jesus fucking Christ, why. Brendon resists the urge to press his face into his palms, but it’s narrowly avoided. He can only handle so much. Ryan goes off on the answer, voice loud enough that if Brendon wasn’t watching in horror he’d suspect a megaphone. “Let us go forth! Go forth and find better attire!”

“Ryan, it’s five in the morning,” Gerard reminds him lightly.

“We’ll form a line outside the shop!”

Mikey snorts, and Bob turns his head to actually look at the man poking the fuck out of him. He stares so long Brendon thinks he’s going to refuse the job and walk out. Then he just shakes his head, once, slowly, and says very simply “no.”

Ryan looks heartbroken. He looks so crushed that Brendon can’t help but join Mikey in his snorting. Frank does one better, he falls to the soggy floor, laughing. Gerard on the other hand wanders back from the kitchen a few minutes later, three coffee cups in each hand, each slanted dangerously to hook around his fingers. Not that it would matter right now anyway, with all the carpet covered. Brendon takes his and maybe hates Gerard slightly less for a moment or two. The coffee has rapidly disintegrating marshmallows.

Brendon’s not entirely sure what Bob’s doing, but he appears to be doing it well, taking the occasional break to sip his cooling coffee. Mikey’s clearly torn between going back to bed and watching Ryan for more hilarity, and Frank has clearly chosen the second option. Gerard is sitting in the door frame of the art room, glancing over often. It’s not until Frank plops down beside him then springs back up that Brendon really tries to look at what he’s sketching. It’s Bob, fighting a pipe with fangs.

Too late for Brendon to stop him, Frank hurtles himself at Bob. He nestles his face against him and fake whispers “I think Gerard’s in love with your manly manly beard.” Bob doesn’t seem to notice the tiny man clinging to him, he just keeps working.

Eventually the sink is declared fixed, and Brendon pays him, tipping him what he hopes is enough to compensate for the insanity. Mikey pours him another mug of coffee for the road, saying they don’t need the cup, they have tons. Bob replies by pouring the mug into a travel cup stashed in his kit and handing the mug back. Gerard gives him the art and Bob smirks at it, but not in a way that makes Gerard frown, so that’s okay. He’d probably get hit from three directions if he made Gee sad. Finally Brendon manages to close the door behind him, though he’d rather keep Bob and lose Ryan, honestly.

“I like him,” Mikey says.

“He wore flannel.”

“So make him something fleecy, fucktard. I liked him too.” Frank droops for a second before smiling. “Hey, I bet we could call him tomorrow. The shower doesn’t drain very well either.”

“That’s because of all your guys’s disgusting hair is clogging it. We don’t need to call a plumber, we just need tweezers.” Brendon doesn’t even know why he’s trying, this is clearly an argument he’s going to lose. If the three of them want a new best friend, he’s hardly going to be able to stop them. He doesn’t even want to. Bob seems soothing, an obvious ying to their yang. Brendon could use that.

*****

“Can I ask a question?” Frank hazards.

“What’s up?”

“So we’re going on this outing ‘cause you need, what, those plasticy things, right?”

“Sleeves!” Brendon adds helpfully, in the backseat beside him.

“Yeah. It’s not like you can play Magic without sleeves. It would damage the cards.”

Caring about the condition of his belongings is a bit rich coming from Mikey and by extension Gerard, but Frank’s not even going to go there. That’s more of a Brendon complaint. “No, okay, I get that. But like, we’re going all together instead of one of you just picking up a pack-”

“Most come in sixties or fifties, so it would be two packs for a deck-”

Fucking Gerard, that was not the point. “We’re going together instead of one of you picking up a bunch of packages for the both of you because-”

Gerard snorts. From his position in the back seat he can’t see his face, but Frank’s sure it’s scrunched up adorably. Not that he thinks Gerard is adorable, or anything. “You wouldn’t ask someone to pick out your tattoo would you? Your sleeves say things about you as a person.”

He considers burying his face into the headrest of the seat in front of him, but refrains. Just because there’s a massive difference between plastic rectangles for a card game and having something needled into your skin doesn’t mean he needs to be a drama queen about it. If they need to hand pick supplies then fine. As long as there’s something to hold his attention in the nerd haven he’ll be content for the time being.

When the car finally rolls to a stop and Gerard cuts the ignition, they’re only slightly parked away from the other cars in the parking lot of the line of specialty shops that are fucking crammed next to each other only several feet in front of them. Gerard and Mikey pop open the front doors. The moment he’s able to Frank climbs out of the back, Brendon doing the same from his side of the car. He almost laughs when he sees the name of the place. Seriously, who would decide to call a nerdy supply store The Shop of Wonder? Saying as much gets him a glare from Mikey and Brendon just shrugs. Gerard either didn’t hear him or doesn’t care about his remark enough to mention it. 

Inside the place there are several overhead lights buzzing noisily like angry insects around roadkill. Even with all the lights on and functioning properly, parts of the shop are dimmer than others. It’s almost as if it’s trying to project a sense of lairness. If that’s the intent it falls off the mark badly, thanks in part to the bright yellow smiley face painted across one of the walls. Frank wants to laugh his ass off but doesn’t. Gee and Mikey would no doubt get pissy.

Mikey and Gerard move off together in one direction and Brendon ends up pilfering through the comics for a moment before heading in the direction of the card section. Frank thinks about following and instead heads for the section highlighted by the picture of a cartoon person in skintight clothing holding a shiny gun in their hand. He really has no clue if the animated figure is male or female. Often times if they end up on Anime while watching tv he can’t tell the difference. Those shows can be weird and confusing but nine times out of ten the plots are dark and gritty in a way that’s entertaining. Excluding the kiddie shit like Pokemon that plays around four in the evening of course. Those tend to give him a headache from all the color and high pitched squealing that goes on.

The shelves are populated with DVDs shoved together. Some of the spine covers are thin and brightly colored. Those are the ones he mostly stays away from just to be safe. The last thing Frank wants to be reminded of is something stupid like Hamtaro. He doesn’t have the burning desire to know what adventures an animated gerbil/hamster thing has daily. Shit blowing up and gun fights are better than something pansy ass children’s pet rolling around.

Bypassing anything with bright color cuts the selection in half. Frank still has to keep reshelving titles when he pulls them out because they’re part of a tv series and the disc is the only one from that particular series. What’s the use of episodes five through seven if there’s no copies of the other volumes lazing about the shelves? The other thing is the price. It’s almost as if the shop thinks each DVDs been plated in silver or gold with the steep amount of cash they want for the things. One box set for some scifi type series is priced at a hundred and fifty five dollars when he turns it over to check out the sticker. And that’s with a red ON SALE tag posted under the price. Frank can’t help but think about what other things he could buy with that amount of cash. Even if he never buys again, he’ll never be able to forget it. 

It’s like the universe can tell his interest is waning for the overpriced mismatched DVDs. He’s just finished pulling something called Cardcaptor Sakura from the shelf when he hears Brendon shout _lizard guy!_ from across the room. Frank scuttles over. Brendon plays Magic, but not like Mikey and Gerard do, it’s pretty unlikely he’s that excited about finding a specific card. Besides, all the Magic cards have weird ass names like that Homuculus that Mikey powered up and pissed Gerard off with two nights ago. There’s no way a card would be labelled something as simple as Lizard Guy.

Lizard guy turns out to be an actual guy. A background actor from a KISS music video apparently. He’s got a massive mane of hair slightly held back at the top with a pair of mirrored sunglasses and a leather jacket and torn up tight jeans -though not as tight as Mikey’s- and he’s just big in general. The only thing that distracts from the badass look is the map in his hand.

It takes the guy a second to register Brendon, but when he does he smiles. It’s a second piece of evidence that Lizard Guy isn’t going to beat up everyone in the store. No one that looks that happy when smiling would cause a geek physical damage. “Clothing Whore’s Bitch!”

Frank starts laughing at the look on Brendon’s face. It’s fucking beautiful. Lizard Guy on the other hand seems to feel bad. “Oh, sorry. I guess that’s not nice. I don’t really know your real name though.”

Frank drapes himself over Brendon as best he can, face smushed into his shoulder, both his arms around his boyfriend’s waist. He speaks louder to make up for being muffled. “It’s cool, he’s totally Ryan’s bitch.”

Brendon’s attempt to get him off is low on the scale, just a shake of his arm. “You don’t get to decide what offends me.”

He snorts, then belatedly hopes he didn’t get any snot on Brendon’s arm. It’s hard to tell if his sleeve is wetter than normal, the way his face is pressed is making everything get damp with breath condensation. “ _Do_ you find it offensive?”

“...No?”

“Then stop bitching and introduce Lizard Guy. He doesn’t like Ryan, that’s a good start.” It’s not that Frank hates Ryan. It’s just that he takes a lot of patience, and what little Frank has tends to be spent between the three of his men.

Brendon shrugs, jostling him a bit, but still not enough to make him let go. “He has a lizard shop beside The Weather Today. He’s always nice to everyone, there are all these kids that go in every day, and most of them never buy anything, but he’s nice anyway.”

The guy shrugs back. “Being mean to kids isn’t really my idea of a good time. I’m Ray, by the way. Since I’m guessing you don’t actually know my name. You’re?”

“He’s Brendon, the clingy one is Frank, and we’re Mikey and Gerard. Is that one of the custom maps Duncan draws?” Somehow Gerard and Mikey have sneaked up on them, and Gerard’s intense gaze on the map probably isn’t a good sign for future nerd levels in the house.

“Yeah. My DM is new, he isn’t that good with interesting quests. I was hoping this would be gentle inspiration. Better than telling him he sucks, anyway.”

Mikey frowns, and Frank can only assume he doesn’t approve of coddling shitty DM’s, whatever those are. What he says though isn’t a rant. Instead he could sound on the verge of pleading, if Mikey knew how to do that. “We’ve got a free evening, if you want to come over? We haven’t played since moving here, it would be freakin’ awesome to start again.”

They don’t talk about their pasts a lot. None of them want to, there’s nothing good in any of it. But Frank does know they moved to California awhile ago, so it has to have been years. He can’t imagine whatever involves drawn maps and quests and ‘DM’s will be a ton of fun, but he wants it for them anyway. So when Ray grins and says sure, Frank smiles back.

*****

A portion of scratchy blanket wraps around his ankle when Gerard shifts on the mattress. It’s annoying so he bends forward enough to untangle himself. Apparently all vacationing spots buy their bedding from the same supplier, the same evil, horrible supplier. The sheets are always starched within an inch of their lives, the comforters are always the wrong shades to be part of the room decor, and the blankets between seem to be some hybrid of sandpaper and the hooked portion of velcro. It doesn’t help that the blankets are all full sized and not some massive blob of cotton polyester blend.

If there’s one thing Gerard’s sure of, it’s that Frank’s never allowed to book their stay at hotels or lodgings ever again. Chances are they’d end up with another place with bunk beds instead of the largest king available. Once is funny, twice is not acceptable. Not that they haven’t made the best of the arrangements. It took less than half an hour after getting into the cabin for Mikey to suggest a bout of redecorating. So they lugged the four full mattresses out of the side by side rooms and deposited them in the living room, and after realising there wasn’t enough room to lay all four out, had fixed that issue by moving the couch from the living room. It’s now in the hallway, blocking every other room, but it’s worth it to sleep together.

The sound of chipper laughter bounces off of the wooden walls. Mikey has the remote to the the tv that’s sitting in the far corner of the living room in his hand and he’s flipping through the family friendly stations that are the only ones the ski resort seems to allow. None of them have been able to hack the child lock code yet so they’re stuck with things like bad morning talk shows and shittily made game shows for entertainment. Gerard misses their channels and channels of blood, gore, and horror already.

He thinks about getting up and climbing over the hideously patterned couch to go to the bathroom but he’s warm in his cocoon of covers even if the blankets are being the bane of his existence right about now. Falling back to sleep seems like the best option. However, it seems the rest of the world has better options for him. He’s just starting to drift off again when the door to their borrowed home creaks open.

Mikey scoots closer to him and pokes him in the fleshy part of his side three times when he starts to drift off again. Gerard grumbles at him before deciding fuck it and sits up. Brendon walks up to the side of the mattress and waves a thick paper cup in front of his face. Gerard vaguely remembers Frank and Brendon getting up and talking about heading to the main lodge for different reasons. Frank wanted supplies for doing winter shit. Brendon wanted breakfast because for some reason cheese puffs and nacho chips aren’t considered real food items anymore. Apparently they're back. 

Coffee is always welcome which means Gerard almost spits out his first sip when it tastes funny and sweet with no trace of bitter, bitter bite to it. Peeling back the white plastic lid reveals tiny little colored marshmallows melting in dark brown liquid. Of course Brendon would bring them hot chocolate. Gerard’s going to say something about it when he notices Mikey open his lid as well and fish out one of the colored marshmallows so he can taste it before replacing the lid. He’s in love with traitors. That’s all there is to it. But the hot chocolate isn’t too bad for charlatan coffee so he shrugs and takes another sip.

Frank comes in a minute or two later. He’s barely visible over what Gerard can only classify as an explosion of colour in his arms. Gerard narrows his eyes and if his tone sounds a bit snippier than normal, well, tough. He should have been given caffeine. “You pulling a Ryan, all the pretty fabrics?”

“They’re our ski-pants, dicksmack.” Gerard only has a moment to attempt to parse that sentence before Frank throws one of the things at him. Mikey grunts as the fabric slams right into his lap, jostling the cup and spilling still steaming hot chocolate over both their thighs. Gerard doesn’t register the pain, too busy staring at the fabric.

“You got me yellow?” Never mind that he’s not going to be going out and dying horribly anyway, the bottom line is Frank had probably a dozen choices at the rental place and picked _yellow_.

“It’s citron, motherfucker.” Frank grins and turns to toss another set at Brendon. “They’re a womens pair, but I knew you’d fit them, and the guys stuff was mostly boring.”

“Oh, nice. They match my jacket.” Gerard agrees with Brendon. The multiple shades of leaves will match the mint coloured jacket Ryan made him pretty much perfectly. All Brendon needs is a pair of sunglasses and he could be the perfect winter model.

Mikey’s are similarly decent, black with navy, burgundy, and wheat polka dots. And unsurprisingly, Frank’s are moderately obnoxious, red gingham that fades to orange on the lighter bits. Okay, so Frank’s are probably worse than his, objectively. But at least they match his personality. Gerard is not a yellow personality.

“Thanks, Frank. But I’m not gonna ski or snowboard, so.”

“Why? Cause you’ll suck? Cause trust me, we’re all gonna suck. Especially Mikey.”

Mikey lets his hand answer for him, in the form of the middle finger.

“No. I mostly just don’t want to die horribly.”

Frank says _what the hell_ at the same time that Mikey says _for fuck sakes_ , and Gerard thinks it should really be the other way around. It was Frank that was not sleeping and watching horror movies with him two nights ago, not Mikey. It’s a small sign that no matter how much he loves Frank and Brendon, Mikey will somehow always know him best. That or Mikey was the one that first downloaded the movie months ago, and Gerard only noticed it on the computer recently.

Brendon raises his hand, the one with the white and green ski-pants. “Someone wanna explain to me why yellow ski-pants-”

“Citron!”

“Fine, citron, although you’re not Ryan so you can stop that shit any time now. But yeah, why are citron ski-pants going to kill Gerard horribly?”

Gerard rolls his eyes. “It’s not the ski-pants. It’s the wolves!”

“The wolves?” Brendon’s sort of adorable when he has no idea what’s going on.

“Oh, Christ, Gee. Really?” Frank doesn’t seem impressed, but fuck him. Again he turns to Brendon. “Me and him watched this movie a few nights ago about these dumbasses that wanted one last run on a ski slope, so they bribed the lift dude, and then he forgot to send them back down, so they got stuck overnight. Since there’s a storm and they don’t want to freeze to death they decide to bail. Two jump down and get eaten by wolves, the pretty blond girl of course lives.”

Mikey snorts. Gerard doesn’t blame him. The girl always lives. Gerard would really love to watch a horror movie in which the only living character, no matter how traumatized, is a fat, geeky guy. At least the blonde hair didn’t make Frank freak out. It’s not really fair to be thrilled about so called progress. If Gerard had gone through what Frank had, he probably never would have gotten over it. But it does make life a bit easier when Frank doesn’t have a flashback each time he sees a blond.

“Okay, but Gee, we’re not bribing anyone! We’re gonna follow all the rules!”

Brendon looks hopeful, and for a moment Gerard almost relents. Frank had been the one to suggest they all take a winter vacation together, after finding out that his and Mikey’s days off don’t cycle to the new year. He’d instructed Brendon to threaten Ryan with burning his fabric stash to the ground unless he got a week off, only to be told that Ryan takes a week and a half off every December to visit Spencer. Frank had been the first to mention it, but Brendon was the one to ask, so hesitantly, for a vacation to a place with snow, the only one of them to have never seen it. They couldn’t say no, though in retrospect giving Frank the reins was probably a mistake.

“Eaten by wolves. Sorry, not a way I wanna go out.”

“You suck dude.” Frank shakes his head, then kicks off his shoes so he can start to pull his ski-pants on.

A few minutes later they’re all heading out, and it’s not like they’re the type to say _I love you_ and smother each other in a million kisses each time they leave the room, but Gerard gets the distinct impression they’re not happy with him. This vacation is going to suck if they’re upset the rest of the week. He still doesn’t want to ski, but it’s not like he’s anti-snow in general. “Look, when you get back in, blowjobs for all, then a snowball fight. Okay?”

Brendon doesn’t say anything and Frank flips him off, but Mikey waves goodbye. It’s good enough for Gerard. Mikey will work on them for the next few hours and everything will be fine.

The cabin is suddenly quiet again, and Gerard thinks for a minute about going back to sleep. He easily could, it’s dark and quiet enough. But the wet spot from the hot chocolate is going to dry into a stiff stain, and Gerard has no doubt that it’ll freak Brendon out. Better that he leave and give the maid a chance to change all the sheets.

Slopes off limits, there are only a few places he can go. Gerard thinks for a second as he’s slipping on his shoes, then decides to head for the dining hall. It’s possible they do have coffee, and Brendon was just holding out on him.

Gerard decides to not hold a grudge when he sees a gleaming row of coffee makers. Brendon probably just has a association with winter and hot chocolate, just like Mikey demands they watch Charlie Brown Christmas every year. It’s highly unlikely the withholding of coffee was done with malice. Still, that’s not going to stop him from grabbing a cup or five.

It’s rat piss. Gerard has drunk a lot of coffee in his life, and this is the worst he’s ever, _ever_ had. It’s a five step sprint to the garbage can, and even that length of time is an eternity to hold it in his mouth. The liquid sprays and splatters against the other garbage as he spits it out, but he doesn’t care, as long as it’s out of his mouth. It’s only when he’s done that he clues in to the fact that someone is laughing at him.

He turns, expecting a snotty rich kid, the kind of family that probably flew down to their cabin in a private helicopter. It’s not. It’s a woman about his age, hair pulled into low pigtails behind her ears. She’s got a silver thermos in one hand, and she reaches around him to grab a doughnut with the other.

“My artists collective comes up here every winter. You know, because you can draw the same mountain a hundred times without getting bored, right? Anyway, it’s basically every man for themselves. Well, except Jimmy. He claims he likes this shit. But you know, sometimes when he’s doing performance art he drinks his own piss. So we theorise his taste buds are mostly dead. I’ll give you a cup if you give me a good reason why I should.”

Well, shit. How is he supposed to know what a stranger would think is a good reason? “Because I hate mountains too?”

“Good enough.” She reaches a second time to grab a cardboard cup. It’s not their brew at home, but it’s better than nothing, and it’s a thousand times better than the stuff here.

“Wanna go back to your room?” It’s not until he takes in her high arched eyebrows that he realises what he’s said. “Uh, to do art. Not to have sex. My boyfriends wouldn’t like that. Well, except for Mikey. But I wouldn’t want to anyway. Not that you don’t look nice. Because you do. I just. Boyfriends!”

For a moment he thinks she’s going to hit him or something. Then she giggles and says “how coherent. Yeah, sure, let’s go do art. What media do you use?”

“Charcoals, pens, pencils, and paper. I’m up for anything though, I think.”

Gerard’s not sure he’s come across any form of art that he’s intensely against. Yet, that is. He wasn’t even grossed out when he found that one site online with menstrual blood paintings. Blood’s not exactly his _thing_ , but each to their own. It is possible there’s something out there arty and creative that might make him go NO, but he hasn’t found it.

Sitting on the floor in a clear front room area cutting tiny strips of construction paper isn’t something he’s had much experience with if you don’t count the times he’s made paper mache for class. He’s used to drawing things on the paper, not cutting it up. It’s strangely fun though and the conversations bounce between van Gogh and his use of yellow in his work to why bubble wrap should be considered one of the greatest inventions only in the shadow of the coffee maker, duct tape, horror movies and quiet possibly something helpful like cellphones.

There’s no telling what they’re in the process of making. It could be anything from a cave with an angry dragon munching on the bones of stupid knights to the likeness of a mixing bowl swimming with chopped up body parts. They haven’t gotten far enough into the project to decide which would be gruesome enough. On one hand, body parts in a bowl is reminiscent of something out of a fucked up horror version of a fairytale. On the other, dragons eating people messily will always be appealing for obvious, mythical creatures besting humans, reasons. This is much more fun that being stalked by wolves out in the cold.

When his phone buzzes in his pocket he has to move around a bit to find it. After maybe a minute, he finally pulls it out of one of his pockets and flips open the cracked front screen. It’s doesn’t matter who it is, because there’s only three people who could possibly be texting him right now.

 **I WZ PRMISD BJS** Ah, so Frank, then.

“Lyn-Z?”

“Yeah?” she answers, not looking up from where she’s gluing together pinky fingernail sized squares of burgundy.

“I kind of pissed off my boyfriends this morning. I need to go-”

“Apology ass-fucking?”

Gerard laughs. “Close enough. But I’ll be free after dinner, probably. Do you want to do more then?”

“I’m not gonna stop now and wait for my noble man to come back to help me-”

“See, I _knew_ it was medieval horror!”

She continues like she didn’t even hear his interruption, and if what he’s learned over the last few hours about her collective is true, it’s probably a basic survival tactic. “but I’ll still be working whenever you come back around.”

“Great. See you later!” And maybe he can bring them with. Frank probably won’t have the patience for it, but Brendon and Mikey might find it interesting. Or maybe Brendon can go photograph shit with Steve. Gerard’s almost positive he brought his camera with him, though he wasn’t really in charge of the packing. Brendon kept scowling when he or Mikey tried.

“See ya, Gee.”

He considers telling her to not call him that. Mikey was the only one to call him that in Jersey, and now it’s only Mikey and Brendon and Frank -Bob doesn’t do nicknames, and Ray calls him by his character name if he ever uses nicknames- so it’s sort of a thing. But she seems like she could be a friend too. Gerard lets it be.

*****

If Mikey has to listen to the new hire tell him one more time that she likes the color lilac he’s going to find the duct tape hiding in the back room and use the whole damn roll to shut her the hell up. He doesn’t care about her likes and dislikes. There’s a reason he doesn’t care for training the noobs. He has no patience for their mistakes and conversations about shit he doesn’t give a fuck about. Earl’s being a dick again though, which means apparently Mikey gets the joys of making sure some twenty something chick with a mismatched red and black home dye job gets the hang of letting the register tally up purchases for her. 

He doesn’t give a flying fuck if Earl was on some trip rambling about how Mikey knows his shit enough for him to make sure the newest underlings are trained properly. The plain truth of it is that his boss is a massive dick who’s punishing him for whatever slight he thinks Mikey’s preformed now by giving him something even shittier to do than rearranging the overstock in the backroom or making him hunt down all the pens they have ordered so he can know if he needs to order more.

When Myra, Myrtle, Matel -whatever the hell lilac loving chick’s name is- finally gets to clock out from her short shift, Mikey walks out from behind the registers and lets the evening cashier take care of the customers in line. He’s had enough of the day already and it’s not like he has a till of his own popped into a register for him to ring people up with. The morning shift and Earl have been going on and on about night management not counting the till down right, so unless he has a drawer assigned to him, he can’t check anyone out. That’s more than fine with him, he’d rather not deal with morons and idiots all damn day.

As soon as lilac chick leaves after clocking out in the back, Mikey makes his way to clock out for his lunch. Earl can bitch all he wants for Mikey taking his lunch right now, but he doesn’t have to wait for Gerard to get his own break because Gee’s in class right now, so he may as well go now before he gets caught to do some other shit job on the list of things to do during the week.

Lunch today is going to be boring as fuck. Apparently Ryan’s having a meltdown of epic proportions, so Brendon can’t get away. And Frank’s at an interview, nice tie hopefully evening out the finger tattoos a bit.

With a lack of other options, Mikey grabs a burger from one of the places in the food court than starts wandering around the mall. Most of it is the same as ever -though he does take five minutes to stare at the wall mounted band shirts in Hot Topic- but one store catches his interest. There’s nothing in the display windows, just metallic orange curtains, with yellow bead curtains dangling in front. The glinting sign says Copper Insides. It only takes Mikey a second to decide to go in, crumpling his wrapper and shoving it into his pocket as he pushes through the orange.

It’s a clothing store. Mikey’s a bit surprised to see it, normally indie stores are in the strip malls surrounding the mall. The owner must have a ton of money to toss down for the higher mall rent. There are half mannequins everywhere, as the primary item seems to be tshirts and hoodies. A bunch of mannequins are upside down, doing handstands, with their waists attached to the waist of an upright one.

“Ohh, new customer! Tell me all your deepest thoughts, new customer!” the voice is from the minuscule desk with the cash register on top. By the time Mikey looks over the guy is done talking, and it’s impossible to tell if it was Hat and Sideburns that spoke, or Emo Bangs and Tattoos.

“If I ever ran a clothing store I’d just call it Hoodies.”

Hat and Sideburns blows up at that. “See, I goddamn _told you_ , Pete! I told you to name your store something actually relevant!”

Emo Bangs -Pete, apparently- just smiles and says “my insides are copper, and I’d kill to make them gold.” Sideburns seems to take that for an answer, he doesn’t continue the argument. Or maybe he just gives up, like Brendon always does for Ryan.

“Okay, aside from your complete lack of creativity via my store name, any thoughts?” Mikey’s pretty sure Sideburns hisses at him to _not diss the customers, jackass_ , but he doesn’t catch all of it.

“Your mannequins are cool. My boyfriend would want to sketch them.”

“Coolbones. The t-shirts are stapled on, but the hoodies can come off. See?” before Mikey has the chance to say he’s not actually interested in buying clothes, Pete comes out and bends to get the zipper unzipped. Then, still bent over, he notices Mikey’s shoes. These ones have hand anatomy, one mostly red with the muscle layer, the other white-grey with the bones. “Those are fucking bad ass!”

Pete stands and kicks off his shoes and picks them up to press them against Mikey’s chest. “Please?”

“Gerard did them. My boyfriend. Sorry.”

Apparently it’s devastating news, Pete dashes across the floor in his sock feet to throw himself at Sideburns. “Patrick, why don’t you draw me fancy shoes?”

Patrick shoves at Pete in an attempt to get him off. Pete’s almost as tenacious as Frank is though, only the skidding socks making him let go to grab at the desk for balance. “Because I’m not your boyfriend, fuckface.”

“You’d be my boyfriend if you loooooved me!”

Patrick rolls his eyes. “Yeah, no shit. That’s like the definition of boyfriends.”

The next ten minutes are entertaining as hell. Pete is some awesome combination of Frank and Ryan. Mikey doesn’t say much, just watches them banter. Pete is ridiculous, Patrick almost constantly frustrated- except not really, because if he was, he wouldn’t be friends with Pete, wouldn’t work with him- and it’s a good way to spend lunch.

All too soon, though, his time is up. He doesn’t really want to go. Leaving these two to return to customers sounds like a horrible plan. “I gotta go back. Got a camera so I can watch you later if there’s nothing on cable?”

Pete grins. “Oh, like that one time I was in that indie movie that turned out to be a porn. Remember Patrick?”

Mikey thinks for a moment it’s a joke, then he looks at Patrick, who is definitely wincing. “Yeah, I do. You had a screening at your birthday party. With all your family there.”

“It was _art_ , Lunchbox!”

“Your thirteen year old cousin was there.”

“I’m sure she’s seen dick before. They have health class in junior high, right Mikey?”

Mikey is ten minutes late back to work. Earl pitches a fit, but it’s worth it. Now he just has to bring the guys around, and see how identical Patrick and Brendon are when they’re side by side.

*****

Brendon’s only half awake but he decides to not go back to sleep. Sure the bed’s warm and still occupied by Frank and Gerard, but it’s Saturday morning. If he’s lucky he’ll find a cartoon on that isn’t all fighting or some weird anime that’s being foisted off on children instead of something like Winnie the Pooh or Tale Spin. The old nineties Disney cartoons have to be around somewhere.

Thoughts of happy colorful animated characters occupy him on his trip from the bedroom to the bathroom. It’s only when he’s passing by the kitchen that he loses his mental train of thought, all ideas about The Little Mermaid the animated series and its merits verses its mistakes derailing the moment he trips to a stop. Mikey’s in the kitchen pouring himself a bowl of cereal and normally Brendon would only cringe a little when a flake or two of stray crumbs scatters across either the surface of the table or one of the cabinets. It’s usually easy to just sweep them into his hand before dumping them into the trash can. But right now he’s watching what has to be a gazillion tiny particles of sugary grain flecks tumble to the kitchen table’s surface. It’s like the bits of cereal want to amass into an army of miniature mess making crumbs before deciding to conquer the whole kitchen. 

A part of him wants to stalk into the kitchen and snatch up a dish rag so he can wet it and clean up the mess _right now_. But that would be a lost cause. If he does that Mikey will counter with something sex related and then not only will there still be crumbs on the table there’s a chance Mikey will be late to work. It’s unlikely he could just slip into the kitchen to say good morning, the temptation to clean is way too tempting. So Brendon pushes himself to go to the living room. If he waits for Mikey to leave he can clean then. Plus there’s a pretty high possibility that Mikey will bring his bowl of cereal into the living room so he doesn’t have to eat in the kitchen. The couch is more comfortable than the chairs around the table.

In the end Mikey stumbles off with nothing more than a _fuck you_ when Brendon tells him to have a good day. Brendon doesn’t take it personally, Mikey is the only one that has to work today, and he’s the one with the shittiest job. He makes a mental note to try and convince the guys to go to the mall for lunch, and locks the door after Mikey slams it. 

The table is a nightmare. It’ll take a three pronged attack, first the handbroom for the biggest chunks, then a wet cloth for the tiny grains, then a dry towel to make sure it’s not just a wet sugary mess that will dry sticky. Brendon’s on step two when a hand comes to rest on his ass. He jumps a mile and whirls around, cloth extended like it’s a weapon of any power at all. It’s just Frank though, naked except for a pair of red boxers.

“Slammed door wake you up?” Stupid Mikey. Brendon feels bad when he so much as coughs when Frank’s sleeping. Of course, Mikey’s a different person than he is. 

“Don’t worry about it. We all know I’ll fall asleep again in three hours. For right now though, I’ve got an awesome piece of morning wood.” Brendon glances down. Yep, he does. “Wanna fuck me on the table?”

While the suggestion does something for his dick, it also brings him back to the situation at hand. “Gimme five minutes?” It shouldn’t take any longer than that, he can do a quick wipe up.

“Mikey upended the box? Can’t say I blame him, the best sugary bits fall to the bottom. It’s like the best greasy cheetos are at the bottom of the bag, almost clear with oil. But the thing is, in five minutes my wood will be gone, and I’ll need to piss. So do you want to wipe the table, or do you want to fuck me?”

Brendon looks from the cloth in his hand to Frank, and back again. 

“Seriously Brendon. Clean table, or buried balls deep in my ass?”

This always happens. This always fucking happens. Brendon sighs and tosses the cloth into the sink. 

It comes up later. After the table is wiped of cereal and possible fluids, and Frank is stretched out reading in the living room, Brendon grabs his phone and calls Jon. Sometimes you just need a person to complain about your boyfriend(s) to, and Ryan is most definitely not that person. 

“Morning. What’s up?”

“My boyfriend-”

“Which one? Which wow, still weird. Still getting used to the more than one thing.”

“Frank. He wouldn’t let me clean the table before we had sex on it this morning. I was-”

“You shoulda ate toast while you fucked.”

That is about the furthest thing Brendon could have ever expected as a reply. Seriously, how is that even advice at all? He’s trying to think of something to reply with when he hears a crunchy bite in his ear. Jon’s clearly eating toast, which at least makes it slightly more comprehensible. “Did you and Tom wake and bake?” It’s the only thing that makes sense. Because toast. Really. 

“We need to talk. About Eli Whitney. He invented the cotton gin to pick out the cotton seeds. See, they were causing the workers hands to bleed when they would have to pick them out for cotton processing, like before they could turn the cotton into thread and fabric. I guess blood was bad for the fabric, he probably didn’t actually give a shit about the workers,” Jon informs him happily.

Brendon’s vaguely interested. It sounds like something he should have known from history class, but doesn’t remember at all. If he was in the same room as Jon they could talk about it further, snuggling under a blanket that Jon would probably attempt to read the tag to see what fabric it was made out of. For a brief moment he misses getting stoned with Jon. But he has his boys, and Jon and Tom are clearly meant for each other. 

“Oh, neat. Any thoughts on getting boyfriends to give you five minutes to finish what you’re doing before distracting you?”

“But it’s cleaning. Seriously, complaining about sex on a crumb covered table? Dude, I could fuck Tom while tarred and feathered. If you’re that lame you don’t deserve orgasms.”

“Point.” Sometimes the best thing about friends is they give you perspective.


End file.
